Forums: Index > Watercooler > Questions about forms
Questions, observations and suggestions about the alpha release of the Showfacts person-ex suite of templates. If your question is of general interest, please post it here rather than my talk page. -Phlox
- Q: Should I use {{Showfacts person}} and Form:Person?
- A: No. Please use {{Showfacts person-ex}} and Form:Person-ex. You may come across some articles that still use this early development version. It's usually obvious because they have red text syntax errors in them. When all are converted over, the current -ex version will become the standard templates. Until then, use the -ex (experimental version). Please do not use the incompatible "set general" "set death" etc. templates found on these pages. Form:Person-ex users will find templates inserted automatically for supported templates. Manual users may examine existing articles for the list, or might develop a help file to describe usage tips for direct editing.
- Q: Preview is broken. (manual editing)
- A: At the time of this writing, the default (WYSIWYG) editor works very slowly with templates that are complicated. Preview mode intentionally produces a schematized view of infoboxes in a showfacts article. Until this shortcoming of the default editor is addressed, preview will produce this schematized view. I could put in a switch for manual users to override this behavior but I can imagine many folks forgetting and leaving it on, which would mean that newcomers would be penalized when they went to edit articles with the default editor. So unless folks really can't get along with doing a save to preview, I'd rather not. As soon as the editor gets better with complicated templates, I will remove this behavior.
- Q: I'd like to help polish this- how can I help?
- A: There are many help pages that discuss page creation. These need to be updated to re-orient guidance towards article creation using the showfacts templates.
- Q: I like my style of articles. Do I have to switch?
- A: No. While you may miss out on new features, it is true that some of Familypedia's best articles do not use any of the infobox or showfacts templates. Dormant articles may in time be upgraded but if you are uncomfortable with the new templates, feel free to use whatever style that suits you. (Note however that "info page" articles will have their current makeshift SMW capability turned off after the transition is complete.) Whatever alternative style you choose, please take a second look after the showfacts templates mature so that you might see whether the shortcomings that concern you have been addressed.
Bruce Kendall
I've created a couple of articles using the new forms (Stephen Jennings Kendall (1797-1832) and Selium McGary (1831-1910)). I have a few questions about usage:
- In the infobox-style table with the person's facts, the parents don't have links. However the parents do have links in the detailed "facts about" table at the bottom of the page. Is this intentional?
- No. That was inadvertent. Will be fixed shortly.
- A perhaps related observation is that, whereas autocomplete suggestions appear when I start typing a name in the "Joined with" field, there is no autocompletion associatted with the Father and Mother fields
- Thanks. Besides these omissions, Autocompletion will continue to evolve. You may notice that the suggestions are also populated with articles that are not persons. In time, the localities field will only suggest localities and so on. This is currently demoed with county boxes.
- When I was filling in the surname field for Stephen Kendall, autocomplete suggested "Kendall (surname)". Is this the recommended format for this field?
- No. Please delete the (surname) portion of the string. Folks will have to tolerate it for a week or so- I have to generate a separate list for the autocompletion.
- In Selium McGary's page, I had manually added some content (a "tabs" macro) to the top of the page, and it worked fine. However, I subsequently went back into the forms to add some new information, and the "Showfacts person-ex" block was moved to the top of the page, ruining the formatting. Can this be prevented?
- I'll take a look at it. I have learned some things since I ran into some of the limitations of forms regarding placement. I used to believe that there was no way to avoid it. However it may be possible to allow this sort of thing. I had a conversation with the author about the problem but recall there was a fly in the ointment about general usage of the trick I have in mind. Don't recall what it was as I jot out this note, but if I can manage it, I will make it so you can do what you were doing. It may be that the particular tabs you have in mind might be autoincluded with the showfacts person-ex. Nonetheless, people may want to insert other elements prior to the person template. ~ Phlox 17:01, September 27, 2009 (UTC)
Bruce Kendall 12:08, September 27, 2009 (UTC)
Rtol
Did my first page with a form: Ekbert Billung (935-994). Works fine.
It would help if the form places {{SMW templates}} at the bottom of the page.
- ok. That will happen at article creation. Regarding insertion after the person has created an article: Do you envisage any options/ parameters on your suite of templates? If so, a subform like the children one can create it. If you display an infobox, it is tough to automagically place it in the article after creation. If you are a "Set" type template and don't directly display anything at the template's location, then of course it doesn't matter.
It would be good, on the children form, to say something like "Name of Child1 (DoB-DoD); Name of Child2 (Dob-DoD); etc" Or just "List of children, separated by semicolons (;)" rtol 12:34, September 27, 2009 (UTC)
- Yes. All name fields requires some guidance on naming convention. I will place a "by example" message there.
I couldn't find where to put the Wikipedia pages: [1] rtol 12:38, September 27, 2009 (UTC)